3/20/09

The United States Marine Corps Officer Selection Office in downtown Berkeley came under attack once again Wednesday night when a group of vandals broke the building’s windows with sledgehammers and splashed them with red paint.

Officers at the recruiting center at 64 Shattuck Square were not able to say whether the incident was related to protests taking place throughout the rest of the country on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war.

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel said the police received a call at 8:54 p.m. Wednesday from an eyewitness who reported that three suspects were breaking the Marine Corps office’s plate-glass windows and splashing them with red paint.

Whom do we thank for the morning air show? Last Wednesday, at precisely 9:11 A.M, a tight formation of four F-16 jets made a low pass over Arrowhead Mall, continuing west over Bell Road at approximately 500 feet.. Imagine our good fortune! Do the Tom Cruise-wannabes feel we need this wake-up call, or were they trying to impress the cashiers at Mervyn's early bird special?

Any response would be appreciated.

The response:

Regarding 'A wake-up call from Luke's jets' On June 15, at precisely 9:12 a.m., a perfectly timed four- ship fly by of F-16s from the 63rd Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base flew over the grave of Capt. Jeremy Fresques. Capt Fresques was an Air Force officer who was previously stationed at Luke Air Force Base and was killed in Iraq on May 30, Memorial Day.

At 9 a.m. on June 15, his family and friends gathered at Sunland Memorial Park in Sun City to mourn the loss of a husband, son and friend. Based on the letter writer's recount of the fly by, and because of the jet noise, I'm sure you didn't hear the 21-gun salute, the playing of taps, or my words to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques as I gave them their son's flag on behalf of the President of the United States and all those veterans and servicemen and women who understand the sacrifices they have endured..

A four-ship fly by is a display of respect the Air Force gives to those who give their lives in defense of freedom. We are professional aviators and take our jobs seriously, and on June 15 what the letter writer witnessed was four officers lining up to pay their ultimate respects.

The letter writer asks, 'Whom do we thank for the morning air show? The 56th Fighter Wing will make the call for you, and forward your thanks to the widow and parents of Capt Fresques, and thank them for you, for it was in their honor that my pilots flew the most honorable formation of their lives.

Only 2 defining forces have ever offered to die for you ... Jesus Christ and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

These factors certainly all contribute, but the reasons for veteran violence and suicide lie much deeper than these. They begin in the family backgrounds of the troops, and are exacerbated by the nature of military training, the misogyny in military culture, the type of war we are waging in Iraq, and the remorse, fury and self-loathing that comes from fighting a war one doesn't believe in. None of these factors tend to be much discussed in the press, but they add up to a recipe for veteran violence!

More lies from old-guard feminists about the "rape culture" inherent within military tradition. Most modern feminists realize that attacking all males is a losing battle, because men are still required to reproduce and keep civilization around. But these geezerly types still lurk. What's disturbing is that she is a professor of Journalism at Columbia, which may help to explain the media's negative stereotypes towards the military.

1/7/09

Seeing how UCSF is a public university, your tax dollars most likely paid for this trash. From the SF weekly:

Thanks to desperate recruiting methods required to staff those wars, the U.S. Marines may be turning military service into a male sexual fantasy land, where recruits are paid actual money to cohabitate with drunk, stoned, horny teenage girls.

UCSF scientists tested and surveyed 2,157 female U.S. Marine recruits -- out of 2,288 possible respondents -- with an average age of 19. Researchers found that the young women were more than twice as likely as non-military young women to be infected with venereal diseases. And the recruits were prone to engage in behaviors likely to get them sick again.

Who would've thought that young people would like booze and hooking up? It should be noted that San Francisco is the last city in America that should be criticizing "unscrupulous" behavior.

12/11/08

Coming from anyone else, the implication that American soldiers are just hapless dupes might be considered patronizing, even insulting in light of the enormous bravery, willpower and determination needed to volunteer to return to a combat zone after being seriously wounded.

Fortunately, since this is the Onion we can dismiss such obviously unfounded criticisms as being the product of an insufficiently nuanced world view.

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark. At the worst it's offensive, and at the best it is horrendously unfunny. The Onion should stick to making fun of stoners.

12/6/08

Vincent J McManus most likely needed money for drugs, so he decided that stealing a memorial statues in New Jersey would be a quick means to meet this end. Criminals have been known to steal scrap metal from the military to feed their drug habits, but he didn't think the statue would be made out of concrete. From NorthJersey.com (h/t GP):

A borough man has been accused of trying to steal a statue erected in honor of fallen Marine Sgt. Matthew Fenton, a borough resident killed in Iraq in 2006, police said.

The suspect, Vincent J. McManus, told police he took the statue to sell for scrap metal — only to discover later that it was made of glazed concrete, police said.

The statue of a soldier was recovered yesterday in McManus’ back yard, where it was hidden under a garbage can, Lt. Frank Novak said. The only damage is a broken finger, he added.

“The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.” The movie was financed by a company of Cuban’s and is thus directly supported by Cuban. Cuban described the movie in his speech at Blogworld by saying “Soldiers are bored 99% of the time, this film is about what they do with the other 1%.”

Obviously, soldiers do not indiscriminately kill, but apparently rich dickheads like Cuban find it in their heart to manipulate the market to their advantage when they are "not bored". What goes around really comes around, buddy.

11/13/08

French anti-terrorist police are holding 10 alleged members of a violent anarchist movement suspected of sabotaging power cables on high speed TGV train lines.

But it now transpires that the alleged culprits were netted thanks to information from the FBI, which allegedly linked two of them to the home-made bomb attack on an army recruitment centre in New York's Times Square in March.

11/11/08

One of the crazies on The View, for some reason, decided that Veterans Day was an appropriate time to bash the Iraq War calling it "terrible". To their credit, this wasn't much different than the response from some on Memorial Day. Like a late-night game of limbo, a very low bar has been set for mainstream culture.

11/8/08

All that was at the West Chester weekly protests, which Skye has been covering for months, was a couple of signs praising our new President Elect. If the protests were just about getting Bush and the Republicans out of office, why were protesters so eager to drag our troops through the mud the last 8 years?

10/29/08

With their scary uniforms and vehicles that may contain pamphlets with pictures of instruments of wars, it's no wonder that Seattle would want to be isolated from the reality of the modern Department of Defense. This Mom is no exception. From The Stranger:

"[The parks department had] been advertising a teen-appreciation day [with] basketball, swimming, a DJ, and a barbecue," Barker says. She says the woman who alerted her to the recruiters' presence "pulled up with her kids and saw two guys in army fatigues in a black Hummer. She wanted them to go away and they wouldn't." Barker says she's also heard of recruiters showing up to events with climbing walls and video games.

Apparently public property is acceptable for everyone except the military, perhaps because they aren't viewed as the public. Or perhaps because voluntary military service is a burden to over-worried mothers who can't stand to see the sight of military recruiters. Maybe it's time we bring back the draft.

Bonus:Funny letter to the editor regarding this subject. David E. from Tacoma is less than pleased with "commie-hippie" types invading the Puget Sound.

10/27/08

Josh Mandel is the young-looking state rep from Ohio, who has also done two tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps. The number of Iraq/A-stan vets in positions of political power is so small currently, that Fox News once dide a two-and-a-half minute special on him. Trial lawyers and corruption are not unusual for politics, however, so his opponents wife in his district, Barbara Belovich, decided to play up the weirdness of having a military background as opposed to years prosecuting slip and fall accidents. From Townhall:

Of all the factors he weighed, Mr. Mandel says political concerns were not among them. Now he has been forced to deal with the politics of that decision. The opponent in his tough re-election fight, trial attorney Bob Belovich, is attacking Mr. Mandel’s service, arguing that he abandoned voters. Mr. Belovich’s wife, Barbara, acknowledged in an interview for this column that she has told voters that Mr. Mandel “went AWOL” (a military term for desertion) by fighting in Iraq.

Even Mr. Mandel’s motives for serving in Iraq are being questioned. Mrs. Belovich claimed in an interview with this columnist that Mandel “put his personal ambitions ahead of his constituents.” Asked why anyone would enter a war zone out of “personal ambition,” Barbara Belovich replied curtly, “Certainly he wasn’t serving our needs.”

Audio of CHUDs in their backroom dealings are here. Bob Belovich then suggested the only reason he won the 2006 election was because he had a Jewish name. While the election is in doubt, Josh Mandel sure has some real winners running against him.

10/22/08

Matt Welch is a well-respected journalist who currently writes for Reason and the LA Times, and he wrote a highly critical book about McCain before it was cool to do so this election cycle. However, he recently stated that McCain truly is a military hero for suffering during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton. When he made this statement, the flurry of CHUD-related nasty emails in his inbox reached unprecedented levels. From Reason:

Does being a POW make you a war hero? I think not - obviously it is hella-bad times, but that does not in itself make you a "hero." I pray you do not breed or vote...do you feel then that the detainees iwho have been in Guantanamo or rendered ("rendition') to countries more suitable for intense interrogation are heroric and worthy of being considered for the highest office in this land?

Luckily this election will be over in a couple of weeks and hopefully this sort of thing might go by the wayside, but somehow that seems like a too optimistic assessment.

10/20/08

The conspiracy kooks at Lew Rockwell continue to rail against the "fascist" military. This time it has to do with the Blue Angels threatening to conduct bombing runs on the Bay Area. From Lew Rockwell:

To characterize this air show as a form of entertainment is to misjudge its intended purpose. Like the annual May Day military parades conducted by the Soviet government, the objective of this exercise was to remind people of the disproportion of power that the state exercises over them. Should you harbor any sentiments of disobedience to state authority, this is what government officials have at their disposal to bring you back into line. At a time when it became known that a large body of American troops had been returned from Iraq to be deployed in American cities, the presence of such Navy hardware added to the intimidation. President Bush’s threat to members of Congress – as reported by one congressman – to impose martial law should they fail to pass the infamous corporate "bailout" measure, showed the effectiveness of menacing people with violence.

If the purpose of the military was to quash dissenters and malcontents, SF would have been nuked many, many years ago. This conspiracy-mongering schtick is wearing incredibly thin over at Crazy Lew's.

Since hawking lugies on returning Vietnam vets in a fit of self-righteous indignation wasn't enough, some Baby Boomers continue to say nasty things about our Armed Forces. From Aging Hipsters (which Wek has referred implied as the worst blog of all time):

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need more troops for some insane war that makes you poorer and the rich richer, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up eventually, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

Insinuations that troops are only from the Red States is hurtful and inaccurate as it seeks to polarize our society. It should also be mentioned that Flower Power wouldn't make a very good defense policy in Nuevo California either, whatever the hell that's supposed to be.

10/16/08

CHUDs look for any excuse they can to wreak havoc against our beloved military. Christopher Columbus, who came to the new world several hundred years before our Armed Forces were formed, provided a convenient excuse to vandalize a recruiting station. From Santa Cruz Indymedia:

On the night after Columbus Day 2008 we vandalized eleven windows at the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Recruiting Center in Santa Cruz County with a paint and acid mix.

The U.S. government has always waged a war of extermination against land-based ways of life in order to impose capitalist exploitation of the earth and its peoples.

For 516 years they and their predecessors have been met with resistance. Neither law enforcement nor the military can ever defeat our struggle.

To the land and all indigenous peoples devestated by the U.S. government: we apologize for leaving this building standing.

Wasn't Columbus Day a school night? Sometimes CHUDs have no respect for their parents who are paying for them to go to college.